Newspoll and ReachTEL: 51-49 to Labor in Herbert and Flinders

Seat polls show Labor with their nose in front in one seat where they won by a whisker in 2016, and another where they haven’t won in since 1983.

Two new seat polls today, with due caution for the fact that seat polls tend not to perform very well:

• The Australian has a small-sample Newspoll from the Townsville-based seat of Herbert, which Labor won by the barest of margins in 2016 for the first time since the Hawke-Keating era. The reason this seat in particular has been targeted appears to relate to Clive Palmer’s expensive bid to re-establish his political career, to which Townsville is relevant given the failure of his nickel operation there. The poll has the 50-50 result from 2016 turning into a Labor lead of 51-49, which I’m guessing is based on respondent-allocated preferences, as the primary votes look a little more favourable for Labor than that. Labor’s Cathy O’Toole is on 32%, up from 30.5% in 2016; the Liberal National Party is on 32%, down from 35.5%; One Nation is on 9%, down from 13.5%; Katter’s Australian Party is on 9%, up from 6.9%; the Greens are on 7%, up from 6.3%; and Palmer’s United Australia Party is on 8%. The poll was conducted Thursday from a sample of 509.

• The other poll is a uComms/ReachTEL poll for the CFMMEU, which targets Greg Hunt’s Melbourne fringe seat of Flinders, which he holds on a post-redistribution margin of 7.1%. As related by the Herald Sun, the poll credits Labor with a lead of 51-49, with the Liberal primary vote at 36.8%, compared with 51.6% in 2016 – although this is probably complicated by an undecided element. Hunt’s primary vote is only 32.7% among women, compared with 41.2% among men. I hope to be able to obtain full results over the next few days. The poll finds 47.8% less likely to vote for Hunt due to his role in the move against Malcolm Turnbull, compared with 34.4% for no difference and just 17.8% for more likely. The poll was conducted Thursday from a sample of 627. The Herald Sun report also reveals that Julia Banks, the Liberal-turned-independent member for Chisholm, is considering running against Hunt.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

924 comments on “Newspoll and ReachTEL: 51-49 to Labor in Herbert and Flinders”

Comments Page 14 of 19
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  1. C@tmomma
    says:
    It must have gotten to him that time at the polo when nath was the hired help doing his clown routine and Bill Shorten was already on his way in life. A chip on your shoulder doesn’t get much bigger than what nath seems to have about Bill Shorten. I think this definition covers it well:
    ___________________________________
    It was worse than that. Here I was innocently making balloon animals when Shorten pops over to watch my act. Smirking, he proceeded to humiliate me in front of my audience, asking what university course I had attended to learn to make balloon animals. Everyone laughed. I swore revenge and have constructed a man sized voodoo doll which I inflict with pins on a daily basis. A little trick I picked up in New Orleans when I worked on a riverboat casino.

  2. WeWantPaul @ #634 Monday, January 28th, 2019 – 6:05 pm

    I’m sure the pain of losing will be salved by removing a Liberal from a seat they have never lost.

    Maybe, I’m just a boring old fashioned purist who thinks if you want a progressive you need to vote for one, and if you vote for an ultraconservative trickle down believer, that is what you deserve … so for me it isn’t difficult.

    Noble thoughts and losing all the time because that’s just the right thing to do is a reaonable losing position if you want to lose again.

    Steggall onside with Climate Change reform and Refugee Policy.

    Good enough for me in a seat Labor will never win!

    Sometimes you have accept incremental change on issues of importance to the broader community despite disagreement on other important issues. That’s your choice. But it’s a dilemma people have to deal with regarding whom they vote for.

  6. Noble thoughts and losing all the time because that’s just the right thing to do is a reaonable losing position if you want to lose again.

    Steggall onside with Climate Change reform and Refugee Policy.

    Good enough for me in a seat Labor will never win!

    You have a very lossy definition of winning. But that is democracy.

  8. Why has Zali Steggall wiped her old Facebook?

    Is he stupid? The first thing you’d do if you’re running for public office is make sure there are no ghosts to be easily found in your closet by your opponents.

  9. They shouldn’t.

    That’s at best debatable.

    Would it be better if Warringah was at least an outside chance of voting for a truly progressive candidate?

    Sure. But it isn’t.

    So next best option? Vote to create turmoil and disunity in team Regressive whilst the rest of the country gets on with fixing the mess they’ve made.

    I am actually a bit torn on if a loss or an Abbott win is the worst result for the Libs, but possibly leaning a little to having Abbott still around stinking up the joint and delaying any hope of them getting their shit together.

    But in the real world I can see Zali Steggall being a very formidable challenge to Abbott, precisely because so many people just want to erase the bastard from our public life. So added to the fact it denies them a seat and shows ‘moderate’ (sic) Libs that they perhaps don’t need the party anymore I can see an large percentage of Labor positive voters in Warringah choosing to go straight for Zali to make sure she’s there at the last count.

  10. Confessions @ #7259 Monday, January 28th, 2019 – 5:53 pm

    Stupid squared. I wonder if this women lives here. We had a measles notification a couple of weeks ago.

    ” rel=”nofollow”>:large

    Nup. NSW. We have a nasty outbreak of both measles and panicking antivaxers at present. Dorey’s disease is prevalent in Mosman and Bellingen as well as Lismore.

  11. sprocket_ @ #634 Monday, January 28th, 2019 – 2:07 pm

    Well known NSW Liberal Party identity, and former candidate for NSW President John Ruddick out of the blocks with the first slur of Steggal, tweeting this..

    “Why has Zali Steggall wiped her old Facebook? A friend had watched it for years. He says Zali is an ‘apoplectic lefty’ who is so pro Get-Up! he’s pretty sure Zali was at least a donor and likely a member. All fine – but she’s attempting to con voters to believe she’s pro-Liberal.”

    That highlights a major problem with the Liberal Party.

    Supposedly you can’t socially progressive, but an economic conservative.

  12. C@tmomma @ #647 Monday, January 28th, 2019 – 6:10 pm

    sprocket_ @ #641 Monday, January 28th, 2019 – 6:07 pm

    Well known NSW Liberal Party identity, and former candidate for NSW President John Ruddick out of the blocks with the first slur of Steggal, tweeting this..

    “Why has Zali Steggall wiped her old Facebook? A friend had watched it for years. He says Zali is an ‘apoplectic lefty’ who is so pro Get-Up! he’s pretty sure Zali was at least a donor and likely a member. All fine – but she’s attempting to con voters to believe she’s pro-Liberal.”

    That sounds really stalky!

    Anyway, it’s not as if she denied any of that. She stood shoulder to shoulder with the Arch Conservatives’, like Ruddick, bete noir, Tim Flannery yesterday at her campaign launch.

    Gee, imagine if anyone posted all Tony’s inconsistent commentary, backflips and bastardry across many issues. I’m sure he’d survive the blow torch in this environment.

  15. Now Uhlmann is saying Julia Banks will,run in Flinders..

    Again PB miles in front of the news.

    Her seat is a marginal. They don’t go to independents.

    Even Flinders is questionable as if it’s ‘safe’ enough to be an Indie target, but I suppose with the Libs in Victoria ‘safe’ is an even more relative term.

    Ink Chisholm in.

  16. Mike Carlton
    ‏ @MikeCarlton01
    32m32 minutes ago

    Mike Carlton Retweeted SBS News

    Premier, you can “plead” until you’re blue in the face.

    IT’S NEVER WORKED. IT DOESN’T WORK. IT WON’T WORK.

    To think otherwise is reckless folly, placing young lives at risk.

  25. Late Riser @ #658 Monday, January 28th, 2019 – 6:17 pm

    C@tmomma @ #632 Monday, January 28th, 2019 – 5:04 pm

    Late Riser @ #629 Monday, January 28th, 2019 – 6:02 pm

    That Rowe cartoon, I’m not seeing where the budgie smugglers went.

    Tied around his head.

    Sorry, but I mean this one.
    ” rel=”nofollow”>

    Sorry, LR. I thought you meant the Pope cartoon.

    Did you notice that Bill Shorten’s beach umbrella is a facsimile of the Indigenous flag?

  27. That anti-vaxer (vaxxer?) has me thinking. When did public health fade as a thing? Just like speeding, you don’t just put yourself at risk when you play this type of roulette.

  29. Yep; I think we are getting the hang of this strategic voting thing. Who cares if your preferred candidate loses by 10% or 20%. What matters is the nutter goes and that means giving your first preference to the one that is likely to get the numbers to make it happen. And in Warringah it’s Zali.


    I can see an large percentage of Labor positive voters in Warringah choosing to go straight for Zali to make sure she’s there at the last count.

  31. And Steggall is wearing pearls, attesting to her Liberal leanings.

    So did Gillard in during the 2010 election campaign. Who can forget Gillard’s image adorning all those corflutes where she wore a string of pearls and the background was a royal blue.

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/a-string-of-pearls-and-a-soft-spot-for-howard-20100802-113fp.html

    Every now and then, during happier times, Julia Gillard’s office would have a ”dress-like-a-Tory day”. A string of pearls or other subtle accoutrement was worn as a bit of light-hearted fun by the deputy prime minister and her staff at the expense of the opposition.

    These days as PM, Gillard is doing it for real. Barely a day of the campaign has passed without her appearing in a string of pearls. They were there yesterday, despite the shift to the new and real Julia. This is no crime. Conservative voters are wary of Gillard and you do what you have to do to give yourself an edge.

    Yesterday, however, also became ”hug-a-Tory-day” with the said Tory being John Howard. Following her interview with the Herald Sun’s Phillip Hudson, in which she announced her strategic shift, Gillard was effusive about Howard.

    After the caveat that she disagreed violently with many of his policies, she said: ”I think personally, in terms of his characteristics, he brought fortitude, determination and a lot of commonsense to the job.”
    :::
    Clearly, Gillard is now doing whatever it takes to stay competitive in this election.

    So was Gillard “attesting to her liberal leanings” ?

  32. C@tmomma @ #673 Monday, January 28th, 2019 – 6:27 pm

    Late Riser @ #658 Monday, January 28th, 2019 – 6:17 pm

    C@tmomma @ #632 Monday, January 28th, 2019 – 5:04 pm

    Late Riser @ #629 Monday, January 28th, 2019 – 6:02 pm

    That Rowe cartoon, I’m not seeing where the budgie smugglers went.

    Tied around his head.

    Sorry, but I mean this one.
    <a href="” rel=”nofollow”>” rel=”nofollow”>

    Sorry, LR. I thought you meant the Pope cartoon.

    Did you notice that Bill Shorten’s beach umbrella is a facsimile of the Indigenous flag?

    And the deck chair colours are the same as Morrison’s recent photo opportunity. Maybe it’s a Titanic reference.

  36. WeWantPaul @ #627 Monday, January 28th, 2019 – 6:00 pm

    We should be looking at alternatives to coal while we are building out the renewables, because that is going to take longer than most people seem to think.

    We should be looking for cheap clean alternatives to coal while we buildout the cheap clean alternatives to coal …. wait a minute back up the horses there is a step or two of logic missing there.

    We could spend the next 10 or 15 years building enough renewables to power the nation. Perhaps longer.

    Should we burn coal for all that time?

  37. Late Riser @ #675 Monday, January 28th, 2019 – 3:28 pm

    That anti-vaxer (vaxxer?) has me thinking. When did public health fade as a thing? Just like speeding, you don’t just put yourself at risk when you play this type of roulette.

    It’s paradoxical that at no time in history has information been more accessible to the average person, yet the number of people who don’t know basic things seems to be increasing.

    If anti-vaxxers lived in the time before penicillin and survived, no way would they be spruiking anti science nonsense today.

  39. Would the well-known anti-Shorten posters on this site please give the Bill-bashing a rest?
    I know Shorten is not everything you want to see in a leader, but hey, what leader, what person, is everything we would want them to be?
    Sorry to be harking back to the Whitlam days again, but that’s the price you’ll have to endure for having a poster of my vintage.
    I can remember Whitlam being accused by the purer-than-thou left of lacking principle; spine, if you like, because he wouldn’t espouse the sort of lines they wanted.
    In short, they wanted him to end all government subsidies for private schools, totally dis the American alliance; rather than just end conscription and Australia’s participation in the Vietnam War, and probably promise a socialist revolution before he got back for dinner.
    These days, Gough Whitlam is held up as the sort of principled visionary all Labor leaders should aspire to be. I can’t say that Shorten will ever be seen similarly, although I note many now speak approvingly of Hawke and Keating, despite the fact they were once seen as the worst of Labor’s right.
    Just cheer up and see the positive in the strong likelihood that Australia will shortly elect the most progressive government in 44 years.

  40. Ya well the answer is pretty clear isn’t it. Get you kid vaccinated. If it’s too late; she suffers, but keep her away from pregnant women. And as the mother, hang your stupid head is absolute shame.

    Pregnant women who contract rubella are at risk for miscarriage or stillbirth, and their developing babies are at risk for severe birth defects with devastating, lifelong consequences. CRS can affect almost everything in the developing baby’s body. The most common birth defects from CRS can include: Deafness.

  42. I’ve had chats with GHunt in a personal capacity and thing that always struck me was how deliberate, strategic and considered he was.

    Hitching his wagon to Dutton, obviously to grab the Treasury portfolio, was literally one of the most stupid things he could have done.

  44. We could spend the next 10 or 15 years building enough renewables to power the nation. Perhaps longer.

    Should we burn coal for all that time?

    Why would you make up 10 to 15 years. That isn’t a thing. It is a random period of time. Major capital projects are a function of two things time and money. Solar and wind are known tested technologies, some of the solar thermal less so, generating power from water flowing and pushing weights up hill is 1000’s of years time. It is just a matter of how focused we are and how much money we are prepared to dedicate. The whole idea of delaying that project for an interim filler, is kinda fibre to node insanity. Just would waste billions of dollars and a whole lot of time.

  46. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/lancet-warns-of-3-biggest-risks-to-humanity-obesity-hunger-climate-change/news-story/4af17bb1ca98ce3f23f5dba2652809a8

    https://outline.com/dyAFRV

    Four million deaths each year are linked to obesity, and some 815 million people are chronically undernourished, the commission said.

    The commission said a binding international agreement, similar to that reached on global warming in 2015, is needed to address and improve food production and distribution.

    Government subsidies of $US500 billion to beef, dairy and other food industries worldwide should be shifted to sustainable, healthy farming and $US5 trillion ($7 trillion) in fossil fuel subsidies moved to renewable energy and sustainable transport, the commission said.

    The three global dangers are linked in such ways as mass production of processed, nutrient-poor food that causes not only obesity and poor nutrition but major greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change, the report said.

    Interesting item. Outline obtained using Firefox “Send to Outline” extension

    🙄

  49. Confessions @ #682 Monday, January 28th, 2019 – 6:34 pm

    Late Riser @ #675 Monday, January 28th, 2019 – 3:28 pm

    That anti-vaxer (vaxxer?) has me thinking. When did public health fade as a thing? Just like speeding, you don’t just put yourself at risk when you play this type of roulette.

    It’s paradoxical that at no time in history has information been more accessible to the average person, yet the number of people who don’t know basic things seems to be increasing.

    If anti-vaxxers lived in the time before penicillin and survived, no way would they be spruiking anti science nonsense today.

    The amount of information available is also linked to the ease of publishing such information by anybody on social media (speaking as an ols academic marker).

  50. J341983 @ #690 Monday, January 28th, 2019 – 6:36 pm

    I’ve had chats with GHunt in a personal capacity and thing that always struck me was how deliberate, strategic and considered he was.

    Hitching his wagon to Dutton, obviously to grab the Treasury portfolio, was literally one of the most stupid things he could have done.

    There’s a moment in the Claymation classic Wallace and Grommit where Wallace declares he’s wearing the wrong trousers “and they’ve gone wrong”.

    This is Greg Hunt today!

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